It might well be consoling in some way to know that the CIA plots the overthrow of unhelpful foreign regimes. But it is also true. To insist that, say, the CIA had nothing to do with the fall of Arbenz or Allende might feel terrifically sensible and sane - can't always be seeing the hidden hand of the CIA, no call for reductionism... It is also, you know, wrong.

It's worth noting as an aside that the most pernicious conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks was promoted by the American state. In the run-up to the Iraq war every effort was made to link Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. Those who want to debunk conspiracy theories have an awkward time with this one - that particular paranoid fantasy wasn't pushed by the tinfoil hat brigade, but by a highly focussed and skilled group of people working in secret to manage the perceptions of the American and global public ... A conspiracy to promote a (false) conspiracy theory... And they helped prepare the way for an illegal war in which more than half a million people have died (more...)

Readers Comments

Good article Mark. I just find it incredible that Blair got away with the lies and mis-information leading to the war - the dodgy dossier should surely have been a resigning matter - because it revealed the determination to go to war with the Americans come what may. Yet somehow they got away with it. Even Roger Alton, then-editor of the Observer followed the party line, and I am disappointed to see that he is now editor of the Independent.

I personally think anyone who makes reasonable efforts to become educated with the events of 911 would have to be brain-damaged to believe the official version of events. What is known as false flag acts are a staple diet of the world of lies of power politics; eg Reichstag Fire, Gulf of Tonkin incident, Operation Gladio, etc.t just to take a look at 'conspiracy theory' itself- quoting from a piece I penned previously here:

Conspiracy Theory- a form of hypothesis involving humans consciously conspiring to cause events such as wars, assassinations, terrorist attacks, as opposed to explaining said events by means of the Accident Theory, its close relation- the It Just Happened Theory, or the Natural Elements Theory/ Random Fluctuation of Matter Theory. Somewhat strangely, conspiracy theories seem to have a bad reputation as being naive and shameful to the intellect when used to explain events arising form human conspiring.For example, the conspiracy theorist would explain the Iraq War as having occured directly as a result of certain individuals acting in unison to cause this war. The alternative non-conspiracy theory is a strange beast involving the war happening by some form of accident, or the it just happened hypothesis. Similarly the events of 911 are explained by the various conspiracy theories as directly involving humans conspiring, this being the nature of acts of terrorism and war. Again, the apparently wise anti-conspiracy theory presumably involves the events of that day as being a coincidental series of accidents. Though if pushed most will accept that, yes, most likely the events of 911 did involve people conspiring to cause those events.

So the issue here is not of course whether one believes in a conspiracy theory. It's which conspiracy theory fits the facts. And the official one is laughably inconsistent with said facts from beginning to end. peddled by the authorites, to explain those events. As David Ray Griffin said in describing his book, "911 Commission Report- Ommissions and Distortions": "People might wonder is there anything in the 911 Commission Report that is untrue. Now that I've finished the book, my big question is can I find a true sentence in the book. This might sound extreme, but if you don't take this too seriously, and realise that a sentence is part of a paragraph which is part of an argument then it is very hard to find any truth there."

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